CCB

Cabarrus County Beekeepers

FAQ

Female bees play a variety of roles in their lifetime - including gathering nectar and pollen for the hive.

The drone, or male bees, job is to mate a queen. Upon mating, they immediately die.

A queen makes a conscious decision when she lays an egg if it will be a fertilized egg or not. Fertilized eggs are females and unfertilized are males.

The number of eggs a queen lays per day depends on the time of the year. In the spring, as the hive builds up for the honey flow, a queen can lay between 1,200 and 1,500 female eggs a day.

The Queen is the only fertile bee in the colony.

The difference between the queen and a worker is the diet they were fed when they were eggs. A fertilized egg that is fed a diet of royal jelly will become a queen. All female eggs have the opportunity to be a queen – the bees decide which eggs will get the nutrient dense royal jelly.

Honey bees do not sleep at night.

Bees use the pollen they collect from plants to feed the baby bees. Pollen is their source of protein. Nectar is their carbohydrate source and is what later turned into honey.

Bees add enzymes to nectar to turn it into honey.

Bees “fan” the nectar that is brought to the hive to reduce the water content to 18.6%.

Honey is the only food that does not spoil or go bad.

Honey bees visit approximately two million flowers to make one pound of honey.

A bee travels an average of 1,600 round trips in order to produce one ounce of honey – as far as 6 miles per round trip. To produce 2 pounds of honey, bees travel a distance equal to 4 times around the earth.